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Post by dbunch on Apr 8, 2013 15:40:00 GMT -5
I competed in a mixed meet over the weekend (geared and raw divisions together). There were a lot of high school kids competing. I would say at least half were competing geared. Now I don’t have any problem with geared lifters but not a huge fan (in general) of high school age kids (or younger for that matter) lifting geared. I think they should spend more time developing their core strength before they get into geared lifting. I’ll be the first to admit that my knowledge of geared lifting is limited which is why I wanted to get the opinion of some of you that have done both. What do you think of kids powerlifting geared in general?
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Post by George on Apr 9, 2013 23:30:50 GMT -5
Most in tune people I have heard talk about this, many great geared lifters included, advocate a raw base first. Teenagers have that extra flood of hormones and the big T, prime time to get the connectors and stabilizers firing and build a solid base.
In the end, it depends on the competitor. If they are typically lifting raw but versed in top end movements, throwing a bench shirt on might not be that big of a deal and maybe beneficial for competings sake. If these are teenagers who have decided to focus on geared lifting primarily, I would say they are robbing themselves and likely heading into trouble. Imbalances for one thing! Tri strength that overrides pec strength means no power from the bottom, which may very well translate to a shoulder or pec injury trying to push to hard raw. Same with the squat...the top end will have the quads forceful in the upper range, but they are robbing themselves of groin, ham and possible hip involvement (really the posterior chain as a whole) from not handling heavy weights in the hole.
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